Cycling Thoughts

I always like this time of year because the Tour de France is on. I'm a reasonably good recreational cyclist, I ride a road bike as transport, and also as my main form of exercise. Right now, in the university break, I'm mostly riding from Belair in the Adelaide hills, up to Mount Lofty, the highest hill in the range. It's only about 14 kilometers (maybe 9 miles) but it goes from 350 meters (1000 feet) up to 800 meters (2400 feet) so that's a nice way to stay in shape (55 minutes up, 25 minutes back, great view at the top).

I've always cycled, but I'm probably fitter now than I've ever been, largely thanks to a ride I went on in France last year, when I rode from Avignon in Provence to Cannes on the coast, a zig-zag 500 kilometers or so (300 miles) in seven days, with LOTS of hills. Best of all, I ate like a horse, three huge meals a day plus constant snacks, and still lost weight. That ride made me realise I was capable of far more than I'd thought, and I stopped being a pussy who was scared of hills and distances. In fact, I'd particularly recommend cycling to a) anyone female, because it's the best thigh/hip/backside exercise ever invented, and those are the regions women are always complaining about (I'm still astonished more women don't cycle given this fact) and b) anyone struggling to find enough time for exercise in a day, who doesn't live too far from work. Cycling to work may take longer, but if it's feasible (and it's usually more feasible than people think, given that I don't go too much slower than the cars in heavy traffic -- those traffic lights really even things up) then you won't have to worry about gym membership or whatever other exercise you need to stay in shape, so you save time and money overall... especially with fuel costs as they are now.

A few non-cyclists have asked me about safety. I'm pretty careful, and Australian drivers are improving, thanks in part to recent publicity from the death of Amy Gillet in Germany (check out the Amy Gillet Foundation) and though every cyclist has some incidents that make him wince, I haven't had an actual crash since high school. That crash was on a cyclepath with a pedestrian, who walked straight out from behind a parked car without looking. This is the first lesson that surprises non-cyclists -- cyclepaths are lethal, you're safer on the road. Pedestrians should be treated by cyclists like ordinance-disposal experts treat landmines -- without exception, pedestrians are blind, deaf, stupid and dangerous. They obey no rules, and change their minds, direction and velocity at the blink of an eye. Cars are at least predictable, most of the time, and don't weave erratically from side to side for no apparent reason.

The second lesson is that the two worst kinds of drivers are the young, and the old. Of these two, I feel safer with the young... which is surprising, considering how many V8-driving meatheads around Adelaide seem determined to get themselves killed while still on their P-Plates. Yeah yeah, I know the insurance companies say young drivers cause far more accidents than old drivers -- that might be true for car drivers, but I'll bet anything (without knowing the actual stats) that it doesn't apply to pedestrians or cyclists. Just yesterday I nearly got clipped climbing Mount Lofty by an old guy too busy using his windshield-squirters to see me... he missed my handlebars by a foot on an open stretch of road, I know it gave him a shock too because he lifted abruptly from the accelerator just as he passed me... no help there, mate. At the bottom of Mount Lofty, there's a roundabout, and another old guy there simply drove out in front of me when I had right of way. And appologised later -- again, no help there, mate. And just down in Blackwood, another old guy pulled into a carpark just as I happened to be riding past the entrance... at 20kph it wasn't dangerous, I just braked and yelled at him. But there's a trend here -- old people don't see very well. Well enough to see other cars, maybe. But not cyclists, and not pedestrians. There's a brave little kid in Sydney who could tell you that -- Sofy Delezio, a minor celebrity in Australia after being hit twice in the space of a few years by cars driven (badly) by older drivers. If you're an older person, and offended by this, then I appologise... but that won't stop me from gripping my brakes extra tight if I see you driving past. I'm not PC with my safety.

All of this has got me thinking about solutions in Science Fiction terms. And it strikes me that technologies like this could turn out to have duel purposes. You start with a more sophisticated GPS system that can measure the location of every vehicle down to a couple of meters. Then you visually-scan every street in a city into a 3-D map (mount cameras or radar scanners on vehicles and drive until you've mapped each streetscape with recognisable lightpoles, trafficlights, trees, roadsigns, etc). Then, you mandate every car has a little package attached -- first, it has multiple small cameras forward and back, watching the streetscape. It transmits its view back to a central traffic control computer, which recognises the streetscape, and calculates those angles together with the GPS to measure the car's position down to the centimeter. All this takes place in realtime, with every vehicle on the road, so the computer knows exactly where every vehicle is.

That means it can calculate impending collisions in advance, if the driver hasn't seen it. You could even mount a little package on a bicycle if they made it small enough, which would mean that that guy at the roundabout who didn't see me, as soon as he touches his accelerator, the central traffic control knows he's about to hit me. The simplest thing would be to give it an override, so it slams on his brakes. A system like that would pretty much eliminate accidents caused by driver error in those situations... it would also make speeding completely illegal and %100 enforceable, by simply cutting off the accelerator when you break the speed limit. Steering-related accidents would be harder to stop, because it's dangerous to have some central AI overriding the driver's steering wheel... but if you had Head Up Displays in future cars, the traffic net could highlight cyclists in colour on the windshield itself. And maybe give the steering a little nudge toward the middle of the road if the driver isn't giving enough space, and if there's no obstacles in the middle of the road.

All this would be a precursor to the days of true AI, when cars drive themselves without driver input... but it would be a good intermediary stage, allowing the technology to develop more gradually. And could save, I think, a hell of a lot of lives.

Meme Therapy

Short interview with me up on the Meme Therapy blog. Check it out.

New Age Warfare

There's a new trend emerging in the world of warfare, and it's not just guerilla war. Guerilla warfare has been around for ages -- the name was coined for the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invading French (guerre being French (and maybe Spanish too, I think) for 'war' and a guerre-illa being a 'little war') but it's been around by other names for long before that.

This time, however, as we can see in Israel/Lebanon/Palestine, and in Iraq, it's different. Technological advances have made the western powers, and in particular America, great and powerful, but they've also created a vulnerability. That vulnerability is the media, and 24-hour news cycles. More specifically, it is the media's ability to influence the west's other great triumph -- democracy, and with it, the western concern for human rights. In the eyes of anti-democratic opponents, this is the west's greatest weakness, and their stated strategy is now to target that weakness ruthlessly.

Take Hezbollah in Lebanon. First, they commit an act of war against Israel, knowing (and indeed hoping) that Israel will retaliate. They deliberately hide their military assets in civilian regions, partly for protection, and partly because when Israel's strikes inevitably kill civilians, it makes wonderful propaganda. Make no mistake about it, Hezbollah wants Israel to kill as many Lebanese women and children as possible. Their strategy relies on it. Public opinion is then inflamed, the Arab media goes ballistic, world leaders condemn Israel's 'overreaction'... suddenly everyone's talking about Israel as the bad guy, the Islamists and angry Arabs are sending all kinds of support, etc.

This isn't a new concept either -- hoping to provoke a reaction is a pretty common way for people to start fights, everywhere from warzones to pubs. But if your ideology is willing to sacrifice anything in order to achieve a stated goal (in Hezbollah's case, the destruction of Israel) then it actually becomes in your interest to suffer as many civilian casualties as possible... After all, in Hizbollah's ideology, they all become martyrs anyway, and everyone wants to be a martyr, right? That's also why the so-called 'Iraqi resistance' has degenerated into a series of bomb attacks on crowded marketplaces and mosques. Innocent casualties are good, if your only intention is to use the media to upset the majority (though in Iraq, this is being done as much in hope of sparking a local civil-war as it is of upsetting the majority of American voters to lose hope and call for withdrawal).

The sickest and most difficult part of this strategy is that it uses the west's very humanity against it. The Hizbollah and Palestinian strategy today is to basically point a gun at their own heads (or more correctly, the heads of their wives and children) and say 'do what we say, or we'll shoot'. Now, if we didn't care about their wives and children, we'd just shrug, and the strategy wouldn't work. Israel would have free license to carpet-bomb Lebanon, and yeah, that would probably work, as far as dealing with Hezbollah goes. But we do care, evidently much more than Hezbollah does. And Hezbollah is relying on us to care, and to act as Israel's handbrake... thus, from Hezbollah's perspective, evening the odds. This is the bind that Israel, and any western force, finds itself in when fighting these kinds of people.

I think there needs to be some sort of new political/military doctrine written for what to do against such an enemy. Obviously we can't stop the media from reporting it all (though it would be nice to insist on some context now and then), and we can't halt democracy, even if it means terrorists can change election results, like they arguably did in Spain with the Madrid train bombings. Democracy and free press may be short-term weaknesses, but they're also long-term strengths, and a good strategist should never abandon long-term strength for short-term gain. I'm not really sure what should go into this new doctrine, but I've a few ideas.

a) When the west acts militarily against such people, it will inevitably get a public-relations blowback... so make sure you actually achieve something long lasting. This was the biggest criticism of Bill Clinton's period, he made a few craters around folks who upset him, 'bounced some rubble' as some military people call it, and nothing long lasting resulted. I'm a little concerned now that Israel is only getting the worst of both worlds -- all the bad publicity of civilian casualties, without any long-term effects against Hezbollah. Of course, actually destroying Hezbollah as a strategic power will involve MORE force, and certainly a ground invasion, probably followed by some kind of UN buffer force to cover the Israeli withdrawl to follow. That's a lot to achieve, and has its own costs... yet if Israel gets no long lasting result from this present action, it's a big net-victory for Hezbollah, no matter how disproportionate the firepower seems at the moment.

b) Spin is in. This is a sad, sad thing to realise, but western governments, and indeed militaries, now have to work at propaganda just as hard as the terrorists do. Western media coverage is a part of the terrorists' gameplan, so it should also be a part of the military's. I'd suggest establishing working groups, preferably of media or ex-media people, to figure out how to play the media back... the success of Tony Snow as the White House's new press secretary is a good example of the value of having insiders who know how it works. Let people KNOW that media coverage is a crucial part of the terrorists' gameplan. Emphasise it. Run it like an election campaign -- figure out 'the message', and hammer it home, so every official making comment knows exactly which talking points to raise. I certainly don't see that now with Israel, some of the public statements have been all over the place. Their media campaign needs to be as well organised as their air campaign, but it's not.

(And just an idea... if the New York Times keeps printing leaked, classified information, why not feed them false stuff? Leak false stories, let them breathlessly print it, only to discover it's not true, thus making them look stupid, and distrusting every other leak story they get. Of course, this may create some serious bad blood between the media and the military, and create all kinds of questions regarding the military's obligation to be transparent in a democracy... but how transparent is any military during a war? And as for bad blood, I understand most US soldiers in Iraq right now would rather lick sandpaper than talk to journalists...)

Those are the only two I can think of for now, maybe I'll think of others later. Of course, I'm not entirely sanguine about the western militaries learning better ways to manipulate the media, and I may live to regret it. But I think there's a nexus developing here between information technology and warfare that will only get stronger into the future, and it's a pity science fiction writers haven't tried to understand it better. But most military SF is about blowing stuff up, and most SF generally tends to see technology in terms of direct consequences, not second-and-third-stage-removed political consequences. It's significant because it has the potential to govern the future of warfare. If a side is militarily insignificant, yet has command of the information war, it's possible for them to win by losing... which in turn governs what kind of conflicts we're likely to see in the future.

Library Journal Review

Because I feel compelled to post every review (what's the point of having a blog if you don't?), here's the latest review for Crossover. Gotta like that last sentence...

'Cassandra Kresnov is an artificial person, or android, who served the League as a dark-ops specialist (assassin) in its interstellar conflict with the more conservative Federation. An experiment in independent thinking, Cassandra questions the ethics of her occupation, finally deserting to the Federation world of Callay, where she attempts to live quietly as the organic human April Cassidy. Exposed by the Federation, she finds that her former enemies have no room for androids, until an attempt on the life of the Callayan president demonstrates a need for her particular talents.

Australian native Shepherd's first Cassandra Kresnov novel (published abroad in 2001 and followed by Breakaway and Killswitch) delivers a fast-paced story of intrigue and adventure set against galactic politics. With particular appeal to readers of high-tech sf and cyberpunk, this title belongs in most sf collections.'

Bigelow Aerospace

This is pretty cool. As I posted before, I think Bigelow is the guy who'll end up making the most money when the boom comes. I'm reading now that this inflatable test vehicle is going to stay in orbit for about five years, I hadn't realised it would be that long. Hopefully they'll learn a whole heap of lessons from the experience.

The Greatest

I'm watching Roger Federer take apart the very talented Mario Ancic at Wimbledon, and I'm thinking that there may never have been a human nervous system, in the history of many billions of human nervous systems, quite like Roger Federer's. This guy's so talented, he almost represents a new phase in human evolution. It's scary.

Near Miss

This kind of thing is always a little disconcerting. That said, I'm not sure how productive it's going to be to put lots of research and effort into deflecting asteroids with current technology. Current launch technology is very expensive, it's slow to set up, and all the research needed to know the various methods of deflecting hurtling rocks or cometary fragments would take ages to perform... so if we end up in that situation in the next twenty years, we're a) probably not going to have enough time to respond, and b) won't know what do to about it anyhow. I mean, it's been argued many times before -- nukes might just break it into a thousand smaller but equally lethal pieces, and any vehicle we might send up to push it into a new trajectory... well, we don't know what that would take, energy-wise. And finding out would take enormous amounts of time and money.

I'm pretty confident that the problem will solve itself eventually, however. If and when the coming space tourism boom happens, it will make all kinds of new things possible. Big business in low Earth orbit will lower costs dramatically, leading to the mastery of all kinds of basic space technology -- habitats, construction, propulsion, etc. Lower costs in themselves create all kind of new possibilities -- for example, if you told a senior politician today that you could set up a solar-system covering detection system that could track every rock in Earth-crossing orbit for multiple billions of dollars, he'll probably show you the door. But if it's just a hundred million, and most of the technology has already been created as spin-offs from other civilian ventures, it all becomes more feasible.

Next thing -- the private sector will start tracking and studying asteroids anyhow, for mining purposes. Even cheap transport from Earth will still likely be more expensive than having your own raw mineral sources already in orbit, climbing out of a gravity well is always going to be expensive, especially in the kinds of volumes large construction projects might require. Plus asteroids have lots of rare metals that might even become economically feasible to sell back to Earth. So if the mining companies start going after asteroids, they'll have to find a) where they are, and b) what they're made of. That information will give any future asteroid-shield agency most of what they need to know in order to operate. Telescope arrays in orbit or on the moon ought to then be able to find anything within a few years of hitting the Earth (unless it's one of those rogues from the Ort Cloud that bullseyes Earth on its first pass -- but that's astronomically unlikely, usually they whizz around a few dozen (or million) times before hitting anything) and it'll then be dealt with by the agency in question (some branch of the yet-to-be-invented International Space Administration, I guess) using technology largely pioneered by asteroid miners.

All this raises some interesting complications, however. Shifting asteroid orbits, even if purely for mining purposes, is going to be very sensitive. These things can kill planets, after all. Imagine the paperwork required to move a two-kilometer diameter chunk of rock into near-Earth-orbit (if you needed to... maybe you wouldn't).

I Like Being Right...

One of the coolest things about Google is that I can follow obscure little interests or news developments that no one else pays attention to. For example, as I said a while back, it would be very useful for the US Airforce, and for general recruitment for the US military in general, to recruit more female pilots, and fighter pilots in particular.

And now, I see that after Nicole Malachowski became the first ever woman to fly in the Air Force demonstration team the Thunderbirds, Samantha Weeks has become the second, due to start flying next year. Two in a row. Coincidence? Maybe. After all, it takes a certain amount of seniority, I'd guess, to make the demonstration team, and women have only been flying fighters since 1994. But more likely, I think, that someone made the decision to make certain there's a woman in every single Thunderbirds team from now on.

And so they should. No, the military should not be used as a vehicle for equal opportunity agendas... but the whole purpose of demonstration teams is recruitment. If you're missing half the potential talent pool, then you're not recruiting very well. Still no women in the Blue Angels, though... which might tell you something about the Navy's priorities as opposed to the Airforce.